15 



wheat or of that from this sowing, to tempt all the tlies then abroad 

 to deposit their eggs early in the season. Previous to sowing the 

 wheat for a crop (and this may now be done early to advantage), 

 this young wheat should of course be killed by a rotary harrow or 

 some similar instrument, in which case, if this action be intelligently 

 timed, all the young or half-grown larvas in this growing grain will 

 of course be destroyed. If such procedure were general throughout 

 a neighborhood, there seems very good reason to suppose that a vast 

 number of the flies must be destroyed, only those remaining which 

 had not emerged in time to deposit their eggs before this final sow- 

 ing of the fields — a percentage probably too small to do serious mis- 

 chief. 



My information is also to the effect that wheat sown in the latter 

 part of August is often much less liable, in southern Illinois, to be 

 seriously damaged by the fly than late sown fields. In the early sown 

 grain the larvte transform and the flies emerge before winter, the 

 wheat having time, before its growth is arrested by the season's cold, 

 to rally, by tillering, against the damage done. Late sown wheat, on 

 the other hand, if attacked by the tiy, is certain to be seriously 

 damaged, because it has no opportunity to recuperate, and whether 

 attacked by the fly or not, is extremely likely to be killed by the 

 winter. It is not an uncommon thing in southern Illinois, in seasons 

 not especially remarkable for severity, for fifty per cent, or more of 

 the winter wheat to be winter-killed as a consequence of the late date at 

 which it was sown, in the hope of protecting it against the dreaded fly. 



8ince my article on the Parasites of the Hessian Fly, in my En- 

 tomological Report for 1884, another on the same subject has been 

 published by Dr. Riley in the Proceedings of the United States Na- 

 tional Museum for 1885. In this paper the parasitism of Evpdmus 

 allyni upon the Hessian fly, implied in my own Report, is posi- 

 tively asserted ; a new species of parasite, Tetrasticlins productus, is 

 described and treated ; and the species described by myself, under 

 the name of Pteronialus ? fulvipes, is described by Dr. Riley as Me- 

 risiis subapterus. As he had both winged and wingless specimens 

 of the species, his generic identification is probably correct. I had 

 seen only the latter form, and consequently did not attempt to posi- 

 tively fix the genus of the species, described. As my description 

 antedates that of Riley by some weeks, the name of the species must 

 stand Merisus fulvipes, Forbes.* 



The CLOVER SEED MIDGE (Cecidomyici leguminicola, Lintner), first de- 

 scribed by Lintner as Gecidomyia trifoUi, in 1879, (the present name 

 being afterwards substituted for the above) was first reported in Illi- 

 nois, as far as I can learn, by W. F. Carpenter, of Steward, Lee 

 county, in 1882, in a note to the "Prairie Farmer," the date of 

 which I have not at hand ; but in a recent letter Mr. Carpenter 

 informs us that he first observed the pest in Illinois in 1878 or 

 1879, and that it kept increasing in his locality from year to year 



*As the generic identifleation of the species described by me under the name of 

 Pteromalus pallipps has been c-dWcd in question by the editor of "Entomohigica Ameri- 

 cana" (w^onwhatsvoxinCi Mis \m.\)<^SR\h\o lor mf'.Xo \vaa.s.ix\('),\^ is propi^r to say that the 

 species in (luestion belongs strictly to the genus Ptiuomalus, as limited by Thompson in 

 his "Hymenoptera Scandinavice," but not to any of the subgenera recognized by him. 



